Daisy was easily what anyone would call adorable rather than beautiful. Shorter than most of us our age, she had diminutive facial features. She was doll-like, someone who would look like a little girl forever, which was nice when you were a child but not something a grown woman would want.

It was midafternoon on a Saturday, and, like some invisible magician, early spring had run her palm over bushes and flower buds to startle us almost overnight with a bright green, rich cherry-red, and corn-yellow world. Daisy, Edna Howard, Agnes Francis, and I were lying on a brown horsehair blanket under the old, spreading oak tree my father had named Henry the Eighth because of the six smaller oak trees around it. He said they represented Henry’s wives. Proof, he said, was that two of the six had had their tops blown off in a storm, and Henry the Eighth had beheaded two wives. When I was little, I believed it. My mother thought it was all ridiculous.

This was the first time Edna and Agnes had been invited to one of my so-called womanly talks. Both were rather dumpy and plain, grateful for any attention, especially from me. I left it up to Daisy to issue the invitations. That responsibility made her feel more important and helped her convince anyone that she was my trusted personal assistant.

After Daisy’s comment, Edna and Agnes looked at me, anticipating some protestation of modesty, but I wallowed in and often sought compliments more like someone who was far more insecure about her appearance than someone who was confident of her beauty. I even requested praise from mirrors hanging anywhere I went, often pausing to ask, “Am I truly lovely?” I always heard the answer I expected, the answer I deserved.

However, whenever my mother caught me studying myself, she would pounce, declaring, “You’re too arrogant and full of sinful pride, Corrine.”

I would feel my insides twist and knot so tightly that I couldn’t breathe and had to get away from her as quickly as I could. I swear, if she had claws, I’d have been scratched from head to toe.

Why couldn’t she see that it wasn’t so much my being narcissistic as it was my realizing that anyone who wasn’t blind or stupid had no choice but to praise my features, from my unique sapphire-blue eyes with my long eyelashes to my diminutive nose and full, soft, and naturally crimson lips? I had my mother’s high cheekbones but a strong hint of character in the way my jawline was just slightly prominent. I had inherited that from my handsome father. I was rarely sick and never pale. My father swore that I had possessed my rich magnolia-white skin from day one, but my mother said that was a preposterous exaggeration.

“Beauty is often not enough,” I told Daisy.